Had a fun walk last Friday evening leading a photo-walk with some members of the E-System Group in London – a nice stroll from St Paul’s to Blackfriars and back, via the Old Bailey, Samuel Johnson’s House, Fleet Street and Farringdon. Slightly disappointed with the photography though – the city streets were full of drunk workers spilling out of the pubs, and a close look at the architecture turned me into a mini-HRH! Carbuncles surrounded us, Paternoster Sq offended us, and new builds around the Old Bailey confused us. One of London’s charms is that it has buildings from so many different periods jumbled next to each other but I need to be convinced that much of the new modular stuff going up is anything other than generic mediocrity that could be anywhere (without decent planning laws). Blimey you can tell I’m heading to a “significant” birthday…. It didn’t help that the light quickly dulled too, so our photography walk soon turned into dinner in a pub near Smithfields – so all ended alright on the night!
The image at the top of this post is of an alternative to the pianos that are stationed around London – a guitar in an upturned boat instead – very nice too, and probably less likely to attract toddlers than the beaten up Joanna in the tunnel of my local station at Herne Hill.
We also saw one of the Asian pre-wedding photo sessions on the steps of St Paul’s. All slightly surreal with the “groom” not cracking a smile through the whole thing, and a tourist in the corner just watching incredulously:
There was one new build near the Old Bailey which caught my attention, mainly because of its repeating pattern and colours:
But my favourite image from here was probably from the window of the holding cells:
I’d like to say I had better luck in Brighton the following afternoon but I’m not sure I did really! A couple of images below which demonstrate that at least the weather was nice:
And a final one which is probably my favourite from Brighton – leading lines, a bit of grunge, and something about balance when you’ve got three main things in the frame:
It’s looking like we have a “scorcher” to come this next weekend, so time for another go….
Cheers,
Jon
The Photographer's Block 